When I was younger, my mother sat my brother and I down one day to tell us what she thought was exciting news: we were going to have another brother or sister added to our family. Instead of being excited as my mother expected, we cried. We didn’t want another person added to our family — we thought we were perfect just the way we were thankyouverymuch.

“You can get rid of it, can’t you?” we asked.

“Yes, I can get rid of it,” my mother told us, appalled at our reactions to her news. “But I don’t want to. This is a little life inside of me, and while there are ways for me to get rid of the child that’s growing inside of me, I don’t think it’s right. Therefore, I’m not going to do it.”

This was the first time my mother had talked about abortion with us, and after a few conversations following that, I thought I understood it. A fetus inside of a mother is a human life, and we should do what we can to protect it. From that conversation on, I’d considered myself "pro-life."

But as I got older and I paid more attention, I noticed the contradictions in the saintly "pro-life" movement. There were arguments about how that one aborted child could’ve cured cancer, but no one talked about how that same prodigy could be stuck in an under-funded public school, or have to drop out of high school to help provide for their family.

Politicians like Paul Ryan and President Donald Trump preach about how Planned Parenthood should be defunded because of their abortion services. But they don’t talk about how 80 percent of Planned Parenthood's patients are actually trying to prevent pregnancies. They talk about how each unborn life is precious and important and then vote to take away public health care.

If you’re "pro-life," you should be for access to birth control, for sexual education reform, and for Planned Parenthood or any other access a woman can have for her healthcare needs. You shouldn’t be fighting for bills that take away funding for public education, or against welfare for struggling families. Being pro-life means you should be for every moment of that child’s life — not just the nine months that they’re in the mother’s womb.

Saying you’re "pro-life" but voting to defund everything that helps struggling mothers and their children show you don’t actually care about the miracle of life. You’re just anti-abortion and unforgiving of people who make mistakes in their lives. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to protect life, but don’t promote saving a life if you don’t really care about it.